D&D (2024) Martial vs Caster: Removing the "Magical Dependencies" of high level.

[Minigiant]

Personally, I think the two best ideas have been to kill the notion of nonsupernatural classes (every class has access to supernatural abilities, like the monk and blood hunter) and to break the fighter info a handful of classes each with a unique niche and power set. Now you can have a dragonknight that flies, uses dragon fear to court foes and has aoe fire attacks to augment his martial attacks and a nightblade who can go invisible, move through walls and summon shadow duplicates to help her fight.

The no new classes thing WOTC believes in is a bad idea and a detriment to their game design and the $1B goal they aim for.

 

[Krachek]

I'm not really sure 20th level actually applies to those last two. For one, a knight of a powerful kingdom? At 20th level? That's bit overkill dontcha think? I mean, we're talking about a more or less unique individual here. There's very likely only one 20th level character of this class on the entire planet. I'm thinking that the actions of that character getting to 20th level has likely superseded the concerns of a single kingdom.

And a trash character that can't buy beer? Again, how? How could you possibly advance to 20th level and not be sitting on a mountain of gold in D&D?

In 5ed there is no rules or even hint about the rarity or the commonly of high level character. On the other hand there is plenty of assumptions and tropes that come form older editions.
A DM may put all his plots in a small kingdom, or into a tribal or post apocalyptic world. the social role and position of a 20th level character depend very much on the setting, and tone of the adventure.

 

[Zubatcarteira]

The point is to discover what we think the martial equal to a magic Arch.

That is the whole point.
WOTC never made a NPC that you could use as a big bad. Because WOTC and the community can't accept what a "Martial equivalent of an Archmage" is.

There is a Warlord statblock at CR 12 as well, along with the Archmage and Archdruid ones.

 

[Krachek]

I've been perfectly fine with changing the fighter. I just continue to request one feature be put into the lore: if you want a fighter to do supernatural things, give them a supernatural power source. This idea is apparently extremely controversial for a group of people who think the fighter should be able to fly, throw mountains, and kill hundreds of enemies in a single round all using nonmagical abilities that cannot be countered or negated, all because wizards can cast wish and that's not fair.

Everyone "agrees" that the fighter needs to change, nobody agrees how much. One person says John McClean. Another says Goku. Another says Captain America, while another says Captain Marvel. Some want Hercules and some want Hawkeye. You can't design a class that satisfies all of them.

Personally, I think the two best ideas have been to kill the notion of nonsupernatural classes (every class has access to supernatural abilities, like the monk and blood hunter) and to break the fighter info a handful of classes each with a unique niche and power set. Now you can have a dragonknight that flies, uses dragon fear to court foes and has aoe fire attacks to augment his martial attacks and a nightblade who can go invisible, move through walls and summon shadow duplicates to help her fight.

But no, just keep arguing how 4e had it right and 5e messed it up in a silent edition war that never ends...

I think that one thing that fuel this war, is that people seek a rule set that fit perfectly their needs in term of challenge, play style, world building assumptions, etc.
While the designers are trying to make a rule set that offer the greatest possible variety of challenge, play style and worlds building possibilities.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Now I'm confused. I was just told by @doctorbadwolf that I was being totally unreasonable saying that people were insisting that the base class must never be changed.

To be fair, for a start, no one is responsible for someone else’s statements. Beyond that, the post you’re replying isn’t even saying you can’t optionally add things to a base class. Just that it must be optional.

 

[HammerMan]

5e says an Archmage is a 18HD caster with 9th level spells at CR 12.

MOTM has a champion NPC that has 22HD, 3 attacks that deal double normal weapon damage, and is CR 9. It's not enough.

Did you see the tarasque comparison earlier in the thread.

That beast is a joke.

I once took the stats of it and made a medium version (no change to HD hp or attacks and damage) and called it “an Armageddon beast” and my 9th level party had a real issue fighting it. Took everything they had to beat it.
At level 12 I threw two of them at the party.

Game didn’t make it 17th but if it had I was planing a swarm of them.

 

[Krachek]

View attachment 288060

Here's the Blademaster NPC I have. Would anyone object to it being in Core 5e?

I like it, to have more flavor a DM can use the Balor, the Marillith, the Pit fiend as template to create a badass mighty warrior.

 

[Krachek]

Did you see the tarasque comparison earlier in the thread.

That beast is a joke.

I once took the stats of it and made a medium version (no change to HD hp or attacks and damage) and called it “an Armageddon beast” and my 9th level party had a real issue fighting it. Took everything they had to beat it.
At level 12 I threw two of them at the party.

Game didn’t make it 17th but if it had I was planing a swarm of them.

Next time add a breath weapon, 30d6 force damage. that would help!

 

[Emberashh]

You can't design a class that satisfies all of them.

But you can design 7. I didn't jump to 20 base classes in my own game for the giggles.

From what Ive gathered I think the only entity in this fight that'd have a problem with that is WOTC themselves.

 

[HammerMan]

Next time add a breath weapon, 30d6 force damage. that would help!

I needed counter spell and a hood breatheeapon would not hurt.